When AI Learns 'Simulation Thinking', Teachers Can Return to the Essence of Education

In 2026, China's Ministry of Education and four other departments issued an 'AI + Education' action plan requiring layered improvement of teachers' AI literacy and human-machine collaborative classrooms. Fudan University Vice President Zhou Lei emphasized that teachers must transition from AI tool users to intelligent teaching designers. Three major challenges persist: structural teacher shortage (especially in rural areas), shallow AI applications that cannot simulate student cognitive gaps, and lack of supporting systems for teacher AI transformation. Tianli Qiming's 'Tianli Discipline Brain' personalized learning system was selected as a UN ITU 2026 AI for Good case from 267 submissions across 40 countries. The system uses AI as an assistant and teachers as leaders, handling workload-intensive tasks like diagnostic assessment and resource matching. In Yiliang County, Yunnan, the system helped increase undergraduate admission rate to 88.5%, with underperforming students improving more than top students. It has been deployed in over 150 schools serving 300,000 teachers and students. To break through shallow recommendation, Tianli Qiming, together with Beihang University and AIII, released the 'World Model-Driven Educational AGI White Paper' at WAIC 2026, introducing Cognitive World Model (CWM) to simulate student cognitive states via Learning Assessment Modeling (LAM) loop, enabling adaptive learning paths. The white paper also proposes a 'cognitive sovereignty' ethical framework to protect student mental inference data. Tianli Qiming's team won third prize in the 4th World Science Intelligence Competition and was included in CAICT's 2026 Intelligent Agent Innovation Practice Cases.